Cardinals hope to soar past slumping Scarlet Knights

Piscataway, NJ (Sports Network) - Two teams at opposite ends of the Big East
Conference standings meet on Wednesday night, as the Rutgers Scarlet Knights
play host to the 11th-ranked Louisville Cardinals.

Louisville had been cruising along with a stellar 16-1 record, but the team
hit a rough patch as it dropped three straight conference games to Syracuse,
Villanova and Georgetown. Since then however, the Cardinals have righted the
ship with a pair of wins over quality foes Pittsburgh and Marquette. The 70-51
win over the nationally-ranked Golden Eagles this past Sunday improved the
squad to 18-4 overall and 6-3 in the Big East, the latter of which has it
within a game of first-place Syracuse.

Rutgers is hoping to put the brakes on a four-game slide, with three of the
setbacks coming on the road. The Scarlet Knights are still a favorable 12-8 on
the year, but their 3-6 league ledger has them just two games out of the Big
East basement. The team is 8-3 at home this season, but has lost two of its
last three at the RAC. This is the second straight game and sixth since the
calendar turned to 2013 that RU has faced a ranked opponent, and its last such
outing took place at Cincinnati last Wednesday and resulted in a 62-54 loss.

Louisville has dominated the all-time series with Rutgers, winning all but one
of the 11 previous meetings. The Knights' only win over the Cardinals came in
a 65-56 decision at home back on Jan. 28, 2006.

Sporting averages of 73.8 ppg on offense and just 57.6 ppg at the defensive
end, it's no wonder Louisville is enjoying the kind of success it is this
season. The Cardinals rank among the top teams in not only Big East, but the
country as well in several statistical categories, and they boast three
double-digit scorers in Russ Smith (18.4 ppg, 3.3 rpg, 49 steals), Peyton Siva
(10.7 ppg, 6.1 apg, 47 steals) and Chane Behanan (10.5 ppg, 7.2 rpg, 37
steals). Gorgui Dieng (9.3 ppg, 9.9 rpg, 37 blocks) and Wayne Blackshear (9.1
ppg, 3.9 rpg) are close to joining the ranks, and the team as a whole owns
favorable margins in both rebounding (+5.0) and turnovers (+6.5). Smith scored
a game-high 18 points, and Siva tacked on 14 to go with seven assists, helping
the Cardinals whip visiting Marquette on Sunday. Louisville shot 51.9 percent
from the field, while holding the Golden Eagles to just 35.8 percent. UofL was
6-of-16 from 3-point range, while its opponent went only 3-of-13. A 38-26 edge
on the glass coupled with the fact that the Cards turned 17 turnovers into 32
points clearly played an integral role in the lopsided outcome.

Even with an overall record that has it four games over .500, Rutgers is
barely outscoring the opposition (67.8-66.8 ppg), notching the second-worst
scoring margin in the Big East as a result. The team is shooting 45.1 percent
from the field, which includes a 34.4 percent showing from 3-point range, and
it features a pair of double-digit scorers in Eli Carter (15.2 ppg) and Myles
Mack (12.9 ppg, 37 steals). No other RU player nets more than 7.4 ppg. The
Scarlet Knights are the league's top free-throw shooting team (.734), but they
rank near the bottom in both turnover margin (-1.7) and assist-to-turnover
margin (0.9). Despite hitting 8-of-17 3-point attempts, Rutgers came out on
the short end of an eight-point decision at Cincinnati last week. Mack came
off the bench to score 15 points, draining three treys, but he was also guilty
of five of the team's 21 turnovers. Carter and Jerome Seagears both tallied 11
points for the Knights, who shot just 37.5 percent from the field overall,
which just so happened to be the same figure the Bearcats turned in. The
difference in the game was UC's 21-10 advantage in points from the foul line.